We spent yesterday seeing the sites of Bangkok. We started with Wat Pho, home of the giant (15m tall and 45m long) reclining Buddha sculpture. The sculpture is beautiful -- the entire thing is plated in gold with mother-of-pearl detailing, including more than 108 scenes from the life of Buddha depicted on the soles of its feet. The wat itself is pretty wonderful as well. The buildings are all blindingly white with gilded roofs of brightly colored tile.
After the wat, we went next door to the Grand Palace complex, a wonder in it's own right. After seeing the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and the Presidential Mansion in Vientiane, I must say the Thais got it right, managing to go completely over the top in almost every way. There's even a building that's sole purpose is to provide a place for members of the royal family to lay in state.
From there, we hiked up to the infamous backpacker haven, Khao San Road. The place was packed with Western tourists and locals trying to sell them things. We had lunch ata decent little restaurant on the road while the bar across the way serenaded us with a driving techno beat.
We ended the day at the Weekend Market, a massive labyrinth of stalls selling just about everything under the sun. Meg found a few dresses and I got some crappy t-shirts.
Today we've been sort of mellow. We took the Skytrain a couple of stops over to visit the consumerist mecca that is Siam Center and the Siam Paragon. Gotta love a mall with an entire floor dedicated to ultra-high-end auto dealers. Now we're just killing some time before we need to hop in a cab to the airport. The next time you hear from us we'll be back in the States. We spend the night in LA before heading back to Philly Monday. Here's to hoping we have a enough time to hit an In-N-Out Burger in LA.
Enjoy.
BTW, Meg added a couple of posts below and I threw some pictures up as well.
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